Six Feet Under
by p-o-l-k-a-d-o-t-73
Summary: Jacey Slater has moved back to Carmel, California, after a five year stint in New York. She expects everything to be the same as she left it, but Jacey’s in for a huge shock...


**A/N:** Wow… It's been a while. Well, technically this is the first time _I've_ posted anything on this account, because it was just one for me and my mates to muck around with. I've been busy with FictionPress, and then a month or so ago I remembered about this account, and it turns out everyone else has abandoned it.

Which means, you know, they've grown up and I'm still fooling around with writing. Whatever. Point is, I've got a new story- and on _FanFiction_, no less. Woo hoo!

You know the drill- read and review, _please_! (Heh, see, I have manners, too!)

Yeah, so my summary pretty much reveals most of the things that are supposed to be suspenseful. Meh.

**Plot:** Jacey Slater has moved back to Carmel, California, after a five year stint in New York. She expects everything to be the same as she left it- but Jacey's in for a huge shock. Mitchell McTavish has turned into the guy from hell. Why can he see ghosts? Jacey and Mitch are going to have to delve further into their parents' pasts if they want to learn that particular secret. And there's this ghost named Jesse… Why has he suddenly popped up now to give her cryptic messages about what lies ahead?

* * *

_Chapter One_

You do not know how completely and utterly humiliating it is to be standing in front of your class and copying 'make love not war' onto a dusty blackboard. A class that you have been a part of for about ten minutes and thirty seconds.

Yeah. First impressions are great, aren't they?

Although to be fair, I do know most of these people, give or take a slut or two. Oh, and that guy in the corner that's hugging his knees and muttering something about voices…

Welcome to Short Skirt Central- also known as Carmel, California. A town of which I am a newly returned resident- if you don't count the first ten years of my life.

Confused? Okay, here's a quick biography of my life: Mom meets Dad, Mom and Dad forget the 'safe sex' rule. Mom marries Dad (after a whole lot of drama and the attempted removal of several body parts). Eight and a half months later, I am born in Carmel, California. Spend ten years in afore said birthplace, then parents decide it will be 'educational' to shift us all to New York. Spend five years there, admit that it's better than Carmel, and hey presto! Parents move _back_ to Short Skirt Central.

And because my parents are 'chummy' with the principal, guess who was let right back in Junipero Serra Mission School? That's right. Straight into Mr Wallis' class, who then proceeds to make me write out 'make love not war' on the blackboard as many times as is "humanly possible to fit". And with _small_ handwriting.

I mean, granted, I _did_ sock that guy in the face- it wasn't even a good punch, or anything. I doubt it'll even leave a bruise.

Besides, it was his fault. He was bagging my family, okay? And, look, I can take a joke as much as the next person, but I really don't like hearing about my parents. Seriously, who _wants_ to listen to a priest reminisce about the time that he caught your parents making out in the chapel?

… Anyway. You know how most people are all excited before starting at a new school? (I mean, I haven't seen these people for five years. I think that qualifies as a 'new school'.) Some people can't sleep, some can't eat… Yeah, I rolled out of bed at ten past eight, ate two slices of toast smothered in peanut butter and rocked up to the Mission late. Only by fifteen minutes, which is almost a record for me.

And then I had to try and find my way to Father Dom's office, (turned out that they'd renovated the school. Apparently it 'collapsed') which took me another ten minutes. Then Father Dom had to explain, unusually cheerfully, that I was in Mr Wallis' eleventh grade for English and that he'd introduce me and get me "settled in".

His graciousness didn't extend to actually _showing _me where Mr Wallis' classroom was, so I was left to fend for myself in the maze of hallways. I ended up opening the door of a bunch of first graders, and the teacher kindly told me (in the same patient voice that I bet she uses for the _really_ thick six year olds) how to get to my designated class.

So, after all that, I found my English class, and knocked on the door, like a _normal_ person would. A man whom I presumed to be Mr Wallis answered the door, and for a couple of minutes I just sort of stood there in shock, with my jaw hanging open.

There are some weird sights in New York City, okay? But the Big Apple's weird sights are more like a policeman eating subway instead of krispy kremes, or a section of public wall that's _not_ covered from top to bottom in graffiti.

Apparently though, Carmel's weird sights are a twenty-something year old with long, dreadlocked orange hair and a sparse beard. He looked like he'd never shaved in his life in order to grow a beard, and he wore a large blue shirt with a cheesy image of a smiling planet and people standing around it, holding hands. On his feet were some dilapidated flip-flops that looked as if they had seen better days- lots of them.

I mean, I knew Father Dom was a laid back guy and all, but I'm pretty sure this guy was breaking some sort of ancient hygiene rule. You know, thou shall not bare thou's feet in front of a sixteen year old girl with a particular disinclination towards feet, of any kind or species.

What? Some people are arachnophobic, and I just happen to have feet-o-phobia. No biggie.

"So, you must be the new girl?" He grinned widely and stepped back to allow me to enter the classroom.

"Um… yeah." I am so articulate sometimes.

I took a step forward and glanced about the class. It was large and airy; the complete opposite of my school back in New York, where they cram as many kids into as small a space as possible to save money and space. Hah. Obviously the Mission's founders were _way_ more interested in student comfort than money, if the size of Father Dom's office is anything to go by.

The people were basically your stereotypical teenagers that happen to go to a Catholic school. You know, taking vows of chastity and all that…

Not. There was a couple in the back corner that I was pretty sure were going to strip each other of their remaining items of clothing, two students playing footsies- I wasn't sure if one of them was a girl or not- and then there was the slight matter of a paper plane flying through the air and hitting the middle of my eye.

And, okay, that _hurt_, you know? But when I turned to glare at the prick that'd thrown it, I saw that no one was bothering to even glance at me. Yeah, that's pretty much the general reaction I get in my life. _No one cares_.

But whatever. Just because I'm a nobody and everything.

Mr Wallis was fine with the fact that the teenagers he was supposed to be turning into respectable young men and women were turning feral. He went and stood behind his desk, put two fingers in his mouth and let out one hell of a shrill whistle. Seriously, I think I heard the windows of the next ten classrooms along break.

"Oi! Shut up and listen!" Yeah, _that_ got a class of twenty kids running riot to shut up. Instantly, all faces slowly turned towards Mr Wallis as if he'd just yelled out that he was giving out free crack for the first fifty callers, or something. "Thanks, guys."

_Thanks, guys_? What kind of a teacher _is_ this guy? Shouldn't he be all, "If you don't turn around you're all going to stay in five minutes at lunch!"?

"We have a new student starting this year. I hope you'll make her feel welcome and a part of the school. Remember, guys, we can all use a bit of lovin'." I gave him a sceptical look, as in, 'What planet are you _from_?' and he hastily added, "Even if we don't think we need it. This is…" He trailed off, suddenly realising that he didn't know my name. Huh. So much for checking the attendance list, or anything.

There was an expectant silence, except for the not-so-quiet remark from some girl up the back going, "What is she _wearing_?"

Need I elaborate on why I have christened Carmel as Short Skirt Central? I'm not really into the whole 'bearing your flesh' thing. I mean, it's bad enough that _I_ have to see my teenage cellulite, let alone the rest of the human population. Basically, to cut a long and embarrassing explanation short, I do _not_ have the figure of those sticks you see on the runways.

So therefore, the fact that I cannot wear 'whatever I feel like' because I don't want to cause old ladies' hearts to stop when they see my legs that resemble thick tree trunks sticking out of a skirt, means that I have a marked lack of interest in clothing. Not to mention the fact that anything remotely in fashion over on the East Coast would be considered 'cold weather' items here in California.

Anyone noticed that New Yorkers wear a lot of black? Yeah, my theory is that it's because most of them are so busy climbing to the top of the corporate food-chain that they don't have time to grab anything other than a upsized McValue meal. So basically, they want to hide the 'unflattering' bits. And let me tell you, in most cases, it works.

Look, I'm not like a lard-arse or anything. I just don't like wearing skanky clothes like most of the girls my age feel the need to do. So sue me! And I like wearing black because then you don't have to worry about what colour does or doesn't suit you, if you already have too much of that colour, if you look like a giant cherry…

It's all sorted with black. After all, it's not like you've got much of an option, is it? And it's not like I'm _strictly_ black wearing. And I don't have a long fringe that hides my eyes, and I don't worship the devil or anything. God, I have enough problems without thinking that the devil's sitting on my shoulder hissing, "_Kill… Kill… You know you want to!_"

Yeah. Anyway. I go for comfort, too, because really, if you're going to get beaten to a pulp by anything- particularly ghosts- it's nice to be in comfortable clothes while you are, you know?

Beaten to a pulp, I mean.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, during which the 'What is she wearing?' girl glared at my black jeans and motorcycle jacket (garage sale… Mom reckoned she'd kept hers, except we found it clawed to pieces under her old cat after he died), Mr Wallis finally had the sense to prod me.

"Maybe you want to tell the class a bit about yourself?" He whispered patiently.

Oh, yeah. The whole reintroduce-yourself-and-hope-no-one-notices-that-you've-turned-into-even-more-of-a-freak thing. Hmm. It ain't gonna be pretty.

"Um… Well, I just moved back here from New York… That's on the East Coast… Um, I'm sixteen…" Yeah. A grand total of eighteen words, and I was already at the end of my rope. I don't do well in public speaking- might be why I failed that particular section of English, actually. Public fighting? Yeah, I can do that, because usually I get so worked up in proving that I'm right I just plain forget about the people around me. But when there are twenty teenagers sneering up at me, my brain doesn't exactly function properly.

What can I say? Inherited trait, apparently.

"Maybe you want to tell them your name so they can familiarise themselves with it?" If it weren't so pathetic, I would have laughed. He was telling me how to tell others about myself. I momentarily wondered if he'd been smoking pot before he came to school- certainly smelled like it- before I nodded slightly.

Right. The name thing. "Um, yeah… My name's Jacey Slater, and-"

"A _Slater_? They let a _Slater_ into this school?" This guy on the edge burst out fiercely.

God. Why do I _always get that reaction_?

Well, apart from in New York, really. The only person that even cared who my parents were was this guy because apparently our Moms had been friends and-

Yeah, whatever. Still, though, you'd think that he'd wait until we were a little _less_ in public before bagging the shit out of my parents. But _nooooo_. He has to go and be all, "You know that your dad just does anyone, right?"

Like I said. I can take a joke as much as the next person, but when they call one of them a whore- because that was basically what he did, called my dad a man-whore- I get kind of pissed. It's like if someone called me a whore in front of my dad, he would just go absolutely _mental_-

Eck. Don't even want to think about the bloody remains of the unfortunate person to have made that particular derogatory remark about me.

So I felt I owed my old man a favour, you know? I felt that I was totally within my rights to walk up to the kid and punch him in the face. In front of Mr Wallis- it was really quite gravity-defying, how his eyeballs just about popped out of their sockets- and nineteen other kids, half of whom were cheering me on, and the other half of which were making kind of… disparaging remarks about my right hook.

It totally didn't even hurt the bastard. Like, I didn't have enough momentum, because Mr Wallis was going to grab my arm at any millisecond, so I just _went_ for it. Cuffed him on the cheekbone, actually. And I would just like to take a moment to say:

THAT FRICKING HURT!

So Mr Wallis grabbed my arm before I could get him again and pleaded with me to calm down in a really, _really_ tight voice. Like, he sounded like he was on helium, his throat was that constricted.

Wow. The guy must really be against violence.

… Might explain the explicit diagrams of people hugging _very_ intimately against a backdrop of a 'no nukes' sign.

He hauled me (gently, of course, being against violence and all that jazz) up to the front of the classroom, looked me in the eyes and said very seriously, "Now… Jacey, is it? I hope you know that at Junipero Serra Mission School, we have an _extremely_ rigid stance against violence, of any type."

Huh. The school's name is a bit of a mouthful to get out when you're trying to shout quietly with a voice like air escaping from a balloon.

"I know it is your first day, and I'm not sure what kind of school you went to back in… New York, wasn't it? So although we have zero tolerance for fighting, I'll make an exception. Now," he said, and handed me a fresh stick of white chalk, "you can write 'make love not war' on the blackboard as many times as is humanly possible to fit." He smiled, satisfied with his measure of punishment, and watched as I put the chalk to the blackboard.

He stopped me on my first line because my writing was too big, then made me do it all over again. I just completed my first line when the guy who I'd punched walked past me, presumably to go to first aid, hissing, "Who'd want to make love to you?"

I gaped after him, and I _swear_ I heard him chuckle as he left the room.

Creep.

It was going to be a _long_ day.

* * *

I survived. I mean, I knew I would. It was only _school_, after all. Although I have to admit that there were several times during the day when I doubted I'd be taking home my sanity.

I walked through the courtyard to where the buses where, hoping that I hadn't miss the one that would (presumably) take me to my street. I'd been kept in my Father Dominic, because he had heard about my 'unruly behaviour' and wanted to let me know that even though he had put up with it from my mother, he expected a lot more from me.

_Because of my genes._ That's basically a priest's way of saying, "Heck yeah, your mother was an urban rebel and a suspected gang-banger. Don't worry, though, because your father was a saint."

Heh. Not according to that dude in English…

Whatever. I mean, I have bigger problems than one guy, alright? For one thing, there was this eyelash that _would not get out of my eye_.

When I managed to grasp that there _were no buses left_, I think I was perfectly justified in chucking my bag down and poking my eye, trying to get the stupid eyelash out. I mean, does anyone _else _have moulting eyelashes? Er, no. Just me. _Because I am a freak of nature_.

So I finally got the eyelash out (or on the other side of my eyeball, where I couldn't see it, I don't know which) when I bent down to pick up my bag, and collided into something. Something solid, and very tall.

I looked up. And up even more. I'm practically an oompa-loompa, okay? I am just _that_ short. But what I saw didn't exactly disappoint me, if you know what I mean. Six feet of a hot guy with rock-solid abs and that 'Latino hottie' thing about him.

And okay, even if I am opposed to 'hotness' (purely because if I'm not then no one else can be… It's weird logic, but hey, it's _my_ logic) doesn't mean that I can't appreciate a good-looking guy when I see one. Except this good looking guy…

Yeah. He had an otherworldly glow about him.

Cliché much?

"Can I help you?" Look, I was totally over the whole 'hot' factor once I realised he was dead. I mean, _eww_ much?

He frowned and quickly drew away from me. "You don't look like her…" He murmured.

Um, yeah. Because _that's_ normal. I blinked. "Who? 'Cause, you know, if you want me to give a message to your honey who just happens to be alive so you can move on, I can do that if you'll just… You know, go and don't come back-"

He laughed. It was a weird laugh- quiet, but it had that sort of tinkling sound to it. "You act like her, though."

"Yeah," I agreed, even though I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I swear to God, I am _so_ oblivious sometimes that it scares me. "So now that you know that… Aren't you going to, like, go or something?" Not the most intelligent response, but hey. I'd just missed my bus and I didn't _want_ to be hanging around a Catholic school- or _any_ school, for that matter- longer than I had to. Not to mention there was a movement in the corner of my eye…

I blinked. Then blinked again. Finally I poked my eye and, after rubbing the water out of it, blinked again. He was still there.

'Your dad does everyone' kid was staring at me. For a second I presumed it was because he thought I was a freak, staring confusedly and talking to thin air. But then I realised…

He was staring directly at the _ghost_, not me.

* * *

Look, it'll get better. Really... Okay, so I'm _hoping_ that it will, lol. Anyways, more will be revealed... 

Bwahahaha.


End file.
